Human Rights Watch versus the FARC

NY Times, July 10, 2001 

Rights Group Lists Abuses by Guerrillas in Colombia

By JUAN FORERO

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, July 9 - The largest rebel group here regularly violates
the rights of noncombatants by attacking civilians, kidnapping for ransom,
recruiting children and focusing on medical workers, all in spite of the
group's occasional pledges to abide by some international rights norms,
Human Rights Watch says in a new report.

Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/10/world/10COLO.html

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH BOARD OF DIRECTORS WHO'S WHO

1. Robert L. Bernstein, Founding Chair

Almost every Wednesday morning as many as 25 people gather around a
conference table on the 12th floor of the Random House headquarters on
Manhattan's East Side. But this is not an editorial-board meeting. It is
the weekly get-together of officials of Helsinki Watch and Americas Watch,
private organizations that monitor human-rights practices in various parts
of the world. 

They meet in a publishing house because both organizations -as well as Asia
Watch, which meets there on another day - were founded by Robert L.
Bernstein, the chairman of Random House. 

While Mr. Bernstein usually keeps his publishing and human rights concerns
separate, from time to time they overlap. In fact, Random House and Alfred
A. Knopf, one of its imprints, have wound up with several best sellers from
such authors as Arkady Shevchenko, the highest ranking Soviet defector, and
Jacobo Timerman, who was tortured by the military regime in Argentina. 

It has two more probable best sellers scheduled for the fall, when Random
House publishes the memoirs of Anatoly Shcharansky and Knopf publishes
those of Yelena G. Bonner, the wife of Andrei D. Sakharov. When those
human-rights activists were reunited recently, for the first time in nine
years, it was no accident that they met in Mr. Bernstein's office. (The New
York Times, August 6, 1986)

2. Dorothy Cullman 

Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman, who have quietly pledged more than $80
million, mostly to civic and cultural institutions in New York City, are
known as "dream" patrons. 

"They are hugely generous, highly intelligent and participate without
pulling rank," said Robert Marx, the director of the New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, which is receiving $12.5
million of the $30 million that the Cullmans have pledged to the New York
Public Library in the last five years. "And they give -- often anonymously
-- with no strings attached." 

A scion of a wealthy New York tobacco family that once owned Benson &
Hedges, Mr. Cullman is founder and chairman of Cullman Ventures Inc., which
includes the profitable At-a-Glance Group, the diary and appointment book
manufacturer. 

They have quietly given large grants to dozens of city institutions, among
them the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the American
Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden and WNET, Channel
13 in New York. (NY Times, Feb. 3, 1997)

3. Gina Despres 

OVER scrambled eggs four years ago, a group of powerful Washington lawyers
and lobbyists challenged Gina Despres to defend the Bradley-Gephardt Fair
Tax reform legislation - the forerunner to the final tax-reform legislation
backed by President Reagan and expected to be signed by him shortly. 

Mrs. Despres, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley's legislative counsel
on taxes, remembers the meeting as her ''trial by fire.'' Twenty men
sitting around a conference table simply said, ''Explain yourself.'' 

She explained it and recalls, ''One of the things I learned as a result of
that meeting, and others like it, was that if you are really serious about
trying to do something that makes sense, you have in your own mind to
distinguish what you believe and what you know.'' (Christian Science
Monitor October 6, 1986)

4. Edith Everett 

The new Central Park Children's Zoo will roar in on schedule in September
despite a couple's yanking a $ 3 million donation, Mayor Giuliani and zoo
officials pledged yesterday. 

Philanthropists Edith and Henry Everett pulled the contribution after
howling about the city Art Commission's decision to reward their big gift
with a little plaque. 

"There had been so many changes made about what kind of acknowledgment we
were going to get that I told my husband I had had enough," said Edith
Everett, former vice chairwoman of the City University of New York. (Daily
News, May 16, 1997)

5. Vartan Gregorian 

The Carnegie Corporation has chosen Vartan Gregorian, the exuberant scholar
who revitalized the New York Public Library and led Brown University for
the last eight years, as its new president. (Jan. 7, 1997)

McGeorge Bundy, who as national security advisor to Presidents John F.
Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson played a key role in the Cuban missile
crisis, the Bay of Pigs invasion and the military buildup in Vietnam, died
Monday at 77.

Bundy supervised the staff of the National Security Council and was among a
group of young, bright advisors that Kennedy had called on, including
Theodore Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. 

From 1990 to 1993 he worked at the Carnegie Corp. of New York. . . (Los
Angeles Times, September 17, 1996)

6. James F. Hoge, Jr. 

Arguing that its survival is at stake, The Daily News asked its 10 unions
for a $30 million cut in annual labor costs yesterday, according to
participants in the meeting. 

In return, the participants said, the newspaper pledged to invest $210
million in a new plant. 

The publisher of The News, James F. Hoge, told the labor leaders that The
News had an operating loss of $3 million for the first nine months of the
year, according to the participants. They asked not to be identified out of
fear of jeopardizing the talks. (The New York Times October 24, 1986)

7. Bruce J. Klatsky

The nation's largest apparel union has accused the Phillips-Van Heusen
Corporation, the nation's largest shirtmaker, of undercutting workers'
rights by closing its factory in Guatemala -- the only unionized factory
among the more than 200 export-oriented apparel factories in that country. 

Jay Mazur, president of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile
Employees, said the factory closing was intended to warn apparel workers at
other plants in Guatemala and Central America that if they voted to join a
union their jobs would be in jeopardy. 

But Bruce J. Klatsky, chairman of Phillips-Van Heusen, which is based in
New York City, said that the union was blowing the plant closing out of
proportion. He said the company had closed the Guatemala City factory
because a large customer, Mercantile Stores, had turned to another company
to make its shirts, leaving Phillips with too many factories. (New York
Times February 28, 1999)

8. Sid Sheinberg 

BIG GIVERS (Daily News, Apr. 7, 1996)

Sid Sheinberg (MCA): $ 107,000 includes $ 100,000 to Democratic National
Committee 

Lew Wasserman and wife (MCA): $ 143,544 includes $ 100,000 to Democratic
National Committee, $ 1,000 to a GOP candidate 

Edgar Bronfman Jr. (MCA): $ 134,000 includes $ 125,000 to Democratic
National Committee 

Steven Spielberg (Dreamworks): $ 121,000 includes $ 100,000 to Democratic
National Committee 

David Geffen (Dreamworks): $ 110,800 includes $ 100,000 to Democratic
National Committee 

Barbra Streisand: $ 61,000 includes $ 50,000 to Democratic National Committee 

Jeffrey Katzenberg (Dreamworks): $ 43,500 includes $ 25,000 to Democratic
National Committee 

9. Gary G. Sick 

The controversy involving author Salman Rushdie ''has put on hold'' Iran's
effort to have normal relations with the rest of the world, Gary G. Sick, a
White House aide during the Iran hostage crisis, said Wednesday at
Washington University. . . Sick was a staff member of the National Security
Council from 1976 to 1981 and was the principal White House aide for
Iranian affairs during the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis. (St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, February 23, 1989)

10. John Studzinski 

John Studzinski - or "Studz" to his colleagues - is helping to lay an
unprecedented siege to Europe's investment banking market. 

As a leading figure in global finance, the head of European investment
banking for Morgan Stanley exemplifies the US institution's foray into
European business circles. 

Born in Massachusetts, Mr Studzinski carved out his niche in London through
15 years of relentless socialising and shrewd networking. (Financial Times,
January 28, 2000) 


Louis Proyect
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